Seeking Jesus with our Questions & Anxieties Regarding Abortion
Maybe my anxiety level rose because of my politically purple audience—a powder-keg mixture of those who lean left, right, and middle—tenaciously committed to sitting side-by-side.
Maybe I felt anxious because this conversation is an anxious thing. There’s a reason sociologists include abortion when describing certain ethical issues as “a world of competing sorrows.”[1]
Or maybe I’m just an ordinary person who’s been known to carry his phone while scouring the house to find it. Who am I to talk about this?
Whatever the cause, when I spoke about “Seeking Jesus with our Questions about Abortion,” my watch pulsated a cardio workout of 247 zone minutes—12 times my norm.
The Questions We Grapple With
And what to say? Conscience-oriented questions splinter people. “Should abortion be legal?” “Is abortion a human right?” “Is abortion ever permissible?” “When does human life begin?” “How is a mother protected from misuse or harm?
Communication questions divide people too: regarding the Bible, Jesus, truth, and love. When is personal experience important to share or withhold sharing, like my Mom’s teenage pregnancy with me or my time as a social worker? And what about those who try to listen in real-time with no way to pause the conversation? When do we follow Jesus’ lead and say, “There is so much more I want to tell you, but you can’t bear it now” (Jn. 16:12)?
Is there a way to give someone a hospitable chance of hearing our point of view, when deep pain, moral anger, and disparate beliefs lava and steam just beneath the visible surfaces of our lives?
To give each other a chance to hear Jesus we’ll not try to solve or clear up every question in a one-time talk or conversation. Such talk helps us to begin but doesn’t end all we need to grapple with. We’ll need multiple conversations for that.
But Why Jesus?
I know that entering the questions of others in this slower listening way sounds compromising to some. But in the shadow of Roe v. Wade, if I stood up on Sunday morning and declared with jubilation, “God has delivered our country and heard our prayers!” or with equal lament and outrage, “God must deliver our country and hear our prayers!” many in my context would walk out or let go of church altogether.
It's not that folks don’t equally feel these competing sorrows. It’s that:
They no longer trust shrill voices who demand either that a true follower of Jesus display unqualified happiness about this ruling or that no one can be a true follower of Jesus if they aren’t completely sad and outraged by it.
Amid their painful differences, these folks share a bothersome hunch that Jesus cannot be reduced and used this way. So, they remain curious about the intellectual and historical sense it makes to consult Jesus when thinking about a human rights question.[2]
They’re drawn by Jesus’ emotional resources too.
Jesus is known as “a man of sorrows,” uniquely equipped to enter a “world of competing sorrows” with the wisdom to get through it and the compassion to want to.
They’re confounded by Jesus who prioritizes peace for “whatever house” he comes to, when no Pharisee, Sadducee, Herodian, Zealot, Samaritan, or Roman would agree with him doing so (Lk. 10:1-12). They wonder about the implications for our own cultural moment.
Or consider how Jesus retains the capacity to critique those he agrees with in principle because of how his own tribe mishandles people in the name of their good laws (Matthew 23:2-4). Such wise and impartial judgment; an ability to critique even those with whom Jesus agrees in principle, gives hope of impartiality. In my context, even those who don’t yet believe what the early Christians believed about Jesus find unexpected help in Jesus’ way.
If Jesus’ claims are true, then when a law doesn’t go our way, we who follow him are not without hope, and when a law does go our way, it cannot save us. Something more is needed.
The Talk We Try
So, I begin my first sermon by suggesting that whether right or left, pro-choice or pro-life, When Christians talk about abortion, we must try to do so in such a way that people are reoriented toward Jesus as the Bible presents him. I outline the message like this.
· What do pro-life and pro-choice Jesus followers share in common.
· What Christians on the cultural left wish Christians on the cultural right and middle understood.
· What Christians on the cultural right wish Christians on the cultural left and middle understood.
· The difference this will make for Jesus followers.
A few weeks later I talk a second time. “Seeking Jesus Amid Roe v. Wade.” I ask, “Is there an historical moment in Jesus’ life in which he sent out his followers into the headwinds of political and cultural cross-pressures? If so, what did Jesus tell his followers to say and do?”
Our aim is to locate Jesus as our compass, for those who feel lament and protest on one hand, relief and joy on the other, and for those who are anxious and worn out on all sides, who just want to say “F” the world.
The Grace We Need
Two days before preaching this second message, a panic attack mugs me. On Sunday morning one friend asks how I am. Another friend bounds forward with encouragement; still another, brings welcome. The four of us, women and men, laugh, speak honestly, and stand together in the pre-sermon moment—an echo of my wife’s wisdom and kindness from earlier hours.
I’m still meditating on that moment. Not the anxiety but the people who entered it with me. I’m reminded that:
As a Jesus people we aren’t alone when we make a hospitable attempt to talk about hard things in a Jesus way.
Amid our differences, we offer such attempts together. Seeking Jesus as Jesus seeks us.
[1] Margaret Somerville, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/a-world-of-competing-sorrows/article4279850/ (see also John Dickson, Undeceptions, https://undeceptions.com/podcast/pro-life/)
[2] See for example Tom Holland, “Why I Was Wrong about Christianity,” (The New Statesman: Sept. 14, 2016) and Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World (New York: Basic Books, 2019), 494.
